Spades

About this game

Spades is the game where the hand is half over before a card is played. Everyone looks at thirteen cards and says a number — the tricks they think they can win — and your number plus your partner's is the contract you have to hit. Hit it and you score. Miss it and you lose ten times what you promised. You sit South. North is your partner and plays with you; East and West are the other partnership. Spades are always trump, so the two of spades beats the ace of hearts and there is no getting round it, but spades cannot be led until somebody has been forced to play one on another suit. Until that happens, the trump suit is a threat rather than a weapon. The bidding is what makes this different from every other trick-taking game in the catalogue. There is no safety in caution. Take more tricks than you bid and each spare one is a "bag", worth a single point now and minus a hundred when you have collected ten of them — so a partnership that quietly overbids nothing all night still loses a hundred points a few hands from now. Underbid and the bags pile up. Overbid and you get set. The bid is the whole strategic problem, and the computer players take it seriously: they count winners, guarded honours, trump length and short suits, and they deliberately shade their number down, because a bag costs one and a set costs fifty. Then there is nil. Bidding zero is worth a hundred points if you take no trick at all and minus a hundred if you take one, and it turns your partner into your bodyguard for thirteen tricks. A partner covering a nil plays high on purpose, takes tricks off you before you are forced to win one, and leads out their aces so you can throw your dangerous cards away underneath. The computer partner does all of that. It will spend a king to keep your nil alive when the king is worth nothing else to it. Three difficulty settings change how the opponents play their cards, never how they bid — a partner who bids badly is not an easier game, it is a broken one. Easy plays a quick heuristic and gets it wrong about a third of the time; Normal and Hard simulate the hidden hands dozens of times a card and pick the play that scores best on the actual scoresheet, bags and nils included. Games run to 500 and usually take ten to fifteen hands. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.

Controls

Everything is one tap, and the game only ever lights up the cards you are allowed to play.

Touch

• Tap a number to bid that many tricks, or Nil to bid none.
• Tap any lit card to play it. Cards that would be illegal are dimmed and will not respond.
• Tap Easy, Normal or Hard at any time to change how the computers play.

Keyboard

• Tab moves into the bid row or your hand.
• Left and Right walk along the cards you can legally play.
• Enter or Space plays the card you are on, or takes the bid you are on.

How to play

Bid the number of tricks you expect to win, then win exactly that many with your partner.

Bidding

• Every player bids first, going round from the dealer's left. Your bid plus North's is your partnership's contract.
• The highlighted pill is what the game would bid on your hand. You do not have to take it.
• Nil is a bid of zero: 100 if you take no trick at all, minus 100 if you take one.

Playing

• The player left of the dealer leads. Follow the suit that was led if you hold it; if you do not, play anything, including a trump.
• Spades are always trump. The highest spade takes the trick; with no spade in it, the highest card of the suit led takes it.
• You may not LEAD a spade until spades have been broken — until somebody has played one on another suit's lead.

Scoring

• Make the contract: 10 points a bid trick, plus 1 for each extra trick.
• Miss it: minus 10 a bid trick, and the tricks you did take are worth nothing.
• Those extra tricks are bags. Ten bags cost your partnership 100 points.
• First partnership to 500 wins.

Read the full Spades rules and strategy →